


You Must Praise the Disappearing World

by Enisy



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cultural Differences, Emotional Baggage, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Occupation of Bajor, Psychological Horror, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:19:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25956619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enisy/pseuds/Enisy
Summary: Kira has drawn a line in the sand: she will not spend time with Dukat outside of station business. But this line – nay, the wholebeach– is blown away when the people on Deep Space 9 start mysteriously disappearing...
Relationships: Dukat/Kira Nerys
Comments: 55
Kudos: 44
Collections: Villainous Big Bang 2020





	1. Sundial

**Author's Note:**

> The story was beta-read by the prodigious [Duinemerwen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duinemerwen/works), whose fantastic writing is also available on AO3. My partners in crime for the Villainous Big Bang are [karrenia_rune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune), who's putting together a [lovely fanmix](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25917484) for this story, and [ideare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ideare/pseuds/ideare), who made some [fantastic graphics](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25980610). Check them out!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title inspired by Adam Zagajewski’s poem [Try to Praise the Mutilated World](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57095/try-to-praise-the-mutilated-world-56d23a3f28187). This picks up shortly after the Season 6 episode _Sons and Daughters_ and veers off from there.

“It’s not always like this,” said Kira with a forced grin.

Ziyal looked shaken as they walked out of the temple. Kira could not blame her: the sermon had not been for the faint of heart. She had been hoping the girl’s reintroduction to the Bajoran religion would be Prylar Ubu, but instead they’d gotten Prylar Kern, who always laid it on thick. She didn’t think the Prayer of Uninterrupted Regret should _actually_ be delivered without interruption.

She was considering buying Ziyal a jumja stick to make it up to her, but everything in her head went silent when she saw how packed the Promenade was.

With tourists!

Some of them immediately accosted Kira for an autograph, which she signed in short, angry stabs. The rest flowed along the Promenade in one direction, as if caught in a mud-heavy whirlpool. And if anyone as much as stopped to pass gas, Quark was on them like a Jem’Hadar on white – peddling _who-knows-what_ purchased from _don’t-ask-whom_ in order to _Rom_ - _you-DIMWIT-don’t-tell-them!_

“Oh,” Kira sighed. Now she remembered what this was about: the Traveling Y’Raka Exhibition. Skulking among the visitors, or straining for air above their heads, were dozens of statues, most of which Kira had already seen. If you’d lived on Bajor for any length of time, you were probably familiar with Y’Raka’s oeuvre. The majority of his works had been smashed or stolen during the Occupation, but the remaining collection – small and diminished as it was – really lent itself to traveling exhibitions.

Funny, that.

He probably owed most of his fame to the Cardassians.

“Is this really how the ancient texts describe the Fire Caves?” asked Ziyal abruptly. All her attention was focused on the viewport, and the darkness of space outside. She couldn’t seem to look Kira in the eye. “Pain like a thousand paper cuts, constant discomfort, the air always too hot or too cold, and a sensation of ropes down your nostrils. _Isolation_ –” She shook her head. “I admit I don’t know what the Pah-wraiths did to anger the Prophets, and maybe they do deserve such punishment. But _forever_?”

“Ziyal,” Kira soothed her, “that place is meant for truly _evil_ creatures. An eternity isn’t long enough for their sins, trust me.”

The effect was not the intended one: the girl’s brow darkened, and her expression fell. Kira knew who she was thinking about.

“Anyway,” she tried again, “you needn’t take Prylar Kern so seriously. He exaggerates things for dramatic effect.”

Unfortunately, the prylar happened to exit the temple at that same moment. “No, I don’t,” he said. “I follow the ancient texts to the letter… unlike _some_ of my peers.”

The prylar looked quite menacing despite his small stature – which certainly lined up with his reputation. It took guts to file for a return to a Cardassian-occupied station. Kira had a lot of respect for the man, but she wasn’t about to go easy on him. “Prylar, I doubt the walls are really inlaid with the _blood-specked toenails of sinners_.”

“This figurative interpretation of the prophecies is exactly what’s causing the Prophets to abandon us, Major!” He pulled himself up to his full height – all one hundred and sixty centimeters of it. “Watch yourself, or this situation will spiral into something far worse than the Occupation!”

Kira had only meant to comfort Ziyal, but his allegations were starting to bother her. “I’m just saying, it can’t _all_ be meant literally. I’ve _been_ to the Fire Caves – there is no actual fire there.”

The prylar was moving his mouth, but she couldn’t listen to him anymore. She had just caught wind of another problem: one that made their religious disagreements seem pedantic.

Her charge was gone.

“Ziyal?” cried Kira, blood running cold.

There was no sight of her dark hair, nor of the blue dress Kira had once admired in front of a mirror. No follow-up. No response.

“Where are you? Ziyal!”

The hairs on her arm stood on end. Where did Ziyal go? _When_ did Ziyal go? Kira suddenly conceived an intense hatred for the alien bodies around her. She wanted to raise her fist, punch a hole through them and crawl through the gore and flesh to wherever she may be.

It was her fault. She had been so intent on defending Ziyal’s honor, she had lost sight of the girl herself. Dammit – it was so stupid of her, so _typical_. This was the mindset that had kept her from her own father’s deathbed. The same mindset that had almost kept her from Tekeny’s.

“Ziyal!”

I’m not fit to care for a Hypurian beetle, she thought. Followed by: her father will kill me.

“Say something!” Kira was elbowing past people, shouting herself hoarse. “ _Ziyal_!”

Throughout her search, a sentence rang through her head again and again – one which would come back to haunt her at a later date. _She couldn’t have just vanished. She couldn’t have just vanished. She couldn’t have just_ vanished _._

“Over here, Nerys.”

Behind an aluminium statue of a noble, well-endowed man, Ziyal stood chin in hand, looking pensive. Wasn’t she a sight for sore eyes? Kira moaned in relief and almost swept her up in an embrace – until she noticed who was standing next to her.

Gul Dukat was bent toward Ziyal’s ear, and clasping her shoulder in that vaguely patronizing way of his. However, he pulled away upon Kira’s arrival, grinning at her harried appearance. He looked pretty statuesque himself, with his gelled-back hair and hard, straight lines. Prophets, he probably _slept_ in that armor.

“Nerys,” he greeted her.

“I’m sorry I dashed off like that,” said Ziyal. “You and the prylar seemed so engrossed in your debate, I didn’t want to interrupt – and when I saw father was also here, well…”

“It’s quite all right,” Kira replied.

Her fingers untangled from her hair, which they had been twisting nervously. Her heart resumed its normal rhythm. And if it still jumped every now and then, it was only because of Dukat’s hateful chuckle rumbling through her veins.

“So, what do you think?” Ziyal asked. “The contrapposto pose is very well rendered, isn’t it? You don’t see this three-dimensional, rotating movement very often in modern statues anymore.”

It was… nice. The man looked… handsome. Heroic. Tall? Kira swung her arms back and forth, feeling foolish. So much for being in the artists’ d’jarra.

“I don’t know why Y’Raka has a reputation as a pessimist,” she said at last, nodding at the statue’s loins. “I see a lot of wishful thinking here.”

“Nerys!” Ziyal yelped, scandalized, seconds before she broke down laughing. Kira drank in the sight, unable to suppress a grin of her own. Yes, this was what she had wanted for the girl all along. An existence removed from violence and strife. A lightening of burdens. A normal adolescence.

And now her father spoke up: he who was violence and strife incarnate.

“Nerys, you shouldn’t talk to Ziyal about things with which you clearly have so little experience.” He flashed his teeth. “If you’re finished, I have something to discuss with you.”

“All right, fine,” she said, angling her body toward the girl. She would _not_ let him get to her. “Can you wait here with the prylar? We won’t be long.”

“I’m not a child,” pouted Ziyal, but she acquiesced, moving closer to the old man. Prylar Kern merely bowed his head. His earring nictated as it caught the light.

Dukat took her off to one side, next to the statue of a hara cat in a tunic. The thing was so popular that Kira’s feet were taking a beating from the assembled crowd. And although Dukat made no move to touch her, his pagh draped over her body like a soiled shift. A shudder of impatience ran through her. He’d already left his handprints all over her life, her world, her culture. What more did he want from her?

“I have nothing to discuss with you bar station business,” she snapped.

He seemed disarmed by the hostility in her tone, but recovered quickly. “You’re selling yourself short, Nerys. I think you can carry a conversation on a wealth of topics. I’ve always enjoyed –”

“ _Don’t_ … call me that.”

The Promenade was a chaos of vague, unintelligible murmurs, with only cries of _dabo!_ to give it structure. Kira thought about Jadzia and Keiko and the Chief, and her heart clenched.

“Well, _Major_ ,” said Dukat, grinning, “I was actually going to ask if you would like to dine with me tonight, at the Son’a ambassador’s welcoming ceremony. You and I are required to attend anyway, and I think it would be most… salutary for us to sit together as a show of unity.” His voice dropped suggestively. “There’s no reason we shouldn’t mix business with pleasure.”

The Cardassian’s stratified head filled her vision. It was a dizzying view: all those ridges and channels, valleys and plateaus. Behind him, she could just make out Morn, admiring a three-meter-tall Bajoran nose.

“What’s the matter, Dukat?” she asked. “Did you run out of textiles to bribe me with? Now you’re just politely _asking_?”

“The dress was a mistake.” Dukat tipped his chin to look submissive and nonthreatening. “I don’t expect you to wear anything special tonight, Major. Let us simply drink some Bajoran springwine and enjoy each other’s company – like we did on the _Groumall_ two years ago.”

Beside Y’Raka’s trademark arches, Kira now saw a few new additions to the exhibition. Elliptical shapes… tiny, detailed patterns… these were _Cardassian_ designs! Her temper flared again – at this newest offense against Bajor, at Dukat’s sheer gall, and at the knowledge that she _had_ enjoyed their one and only dinner.

“I’m tired of repeating this, Dukat,” she said, more angry with herself than with him. “You and me – this thing that you have built up in your head – is _never_ going to happen.”

“One dinner, Major,” he implored. His face was so very punchable. “You can’t deny there is a bond between us. I only ask you to give it a chance.”

She stepped closer until their noses almost touched. Dukat’s breath swept over her cheek.

“Not if you were the last man in the quadrant.”

When she came back, Ziyal was obediently waiting for her, but Prylar Kern was nowhere to be seen. He hadn’t announced his departure, and Ziyal hadn’t seen him leave. She’d just turned around to look at the commotion in front of Quark’s… and when she’d turned back, he was gone.

Sweet soul that she was, she immediately leaped to his defense. Maybe she just hadn’t heard him leave. Maybe an emergency at the temple had demanded his attention. Maybe his legs really hurt. But Kira was not satisfied.

The services at the temple were over for the day, and while Prylar Kern was a hard man, he had a profound sense of responsibility. Whatever his private thoughts may be about Ziyal’s heritage, he wouldn’t just _take off_.

It wasn’t just the prylar, either. The whole crowd had thinned considerably since the beginning of her discussion with Dukat.

Beyond the statue of the well-endowed man, an unknown legate’s bust leered at her – and beyond _that_ was Y’Raka’s famous Wheel of Entropy, a stone sundial with its own slow-moving light source. Its shadow had just passed the wedges labeled “Minor Accident” and “Blood for Open Mouths and Beaks” and was currently pointing at “Tragedy.” Dukat bumped her shoulder as he came to rejoin his daughter. Kira couldn’t see her reaction. She imagined that Ziyal was smiling at the gesture – dreaming about communal quarters and three shared meals a day, about family picnics in the holosuite, and maybe a new brother or sister.

Through the viewport, space seemed even darker than before.


	2. Right Hand

The ambassador’s dinner was a forgettable affair. The hors d’oeuvres tasted so insubstantial they probably passed through the digestive tract without breaking down. If anything, Kira felt _hungrier_ after eating them. The only robust-looking food was frefret, a sort of cuttlefish from the Son’a home planet, with nasty-looking teeth and pincers you could use to chop firewood – and was, however, supposed to be eaten live.

Kira politely declined.

Dukat didn’t even glance at her for the duration of the event. This was a new development, and one that amused her to no end. She was sure he hadn’t given up pursuit – Dukat wasn’t capable of that – so in his mind, he must have been playing _hard to get_. Prophets help her. After all these years, and all the humiliations, his ego was like a solid, intractable block of duranium.

“So I spent most of the night talking to Runio – one of the Son’a liaisons,” Kira explained. “I didn’t see much of Dukat… after the first hour or so, I forgot that he was even there. But at some point, Runio gave this _horrible_ shriek and jumped almost to the ceiling – and when he turned to call for help, I saw there was a frefret latched on to his back. Dukat had ‘accidentally’ dropped it on him and strolled away, casual as you please. Didn’t even _pretend_ to be sorry!”

She chuckled at the memory. Odo did not. If anything, he sank deeper into his chair.

“You are awfully cavalier about this.”

“Odo, this is _perfect_ , don’t you see?” She sprang up and paced around the security office, stir-crazy. “If Dukat goes on ignoring me, you and I can operate on Deep Space 9 with more freedom.”

“Nerys –”

“We can get our _resistance_ off the ground!”

Kira was speaking rapidly and with all the intensity she could muster, trying to get ahead of her friend’s qualms. It didn’t work. Odo stirred and put down the PADD he’d been holding, quietly signaling that he had Good Objections and Serious Doubts and Informed Opinions.

“Okay, Odo,” she snorted. “Out with it.”

“I only wish to point out,” he said slowly, “that Dukat may be giving you the cold shoulder – but that’s not the same as ignoring you.” He paused. His next words were soft, almost bashful: “I doubt very much that he could ignore you.”

Kira eked out a weak smile. These reminders of Odo’s affection always made her uncomfortable. He must have sensed it in her body language, for he steered the topic back to strategy – suggesting they turn Dukat’s displeasure into friendly fire, and have him take it out on Weyoun. The latter would be more amenable to Bajor’s requests if he were fed up with his Cardassian ally. And if Kira stayed out of their path, she wouldn’t risk Dukat cracking down on the station’s Bajorans, as he so obviously wanted.

“What would I do without you?” she said fondly.

Odo gave that endearing snort he usually reserved for Quark. “You’d still be losing to Leeta at Kalevian montar, I suspect.”

He picked up the PADD again and they sat in companionable silence for a while, each wrestling silently with their own demons.

Odo was right. Getting rid of Dukat’s attention had been too much to hope for. A mere two days after this exchange, Kira’s combadge was clamoring, her peers’ heads were whipping toward her, and the boss man was summoning her to his office for an _urgent conference_. It was just as well. She had been busting her head for the past twenty minutes, trying to figure out why the secondary phase modulator in the main power core _still_ wasn’t fixed, a full day after she’d reported the problem. Were the Cardassians unskilled or just lazy? She was ready to climb the walls.

“Come in,” Dukat called out.

Kira stood to attention. Their meetings fell under two broad categories, _disturbingly fun_ and _really_ _just disturbing_ , and she could already tell this was going to be the latter. Gone was the smile he habitually wore in her presence. Instead, he regarded her blandly, hands folded on his desk. The air could have come from a mountaintop, it was so heavy and thin, and she imagined jiggling her legs to shake off snow. Clearly, this was not a matter of personal urgency, but of professional urgency.

“Major, if you were gunning for a promotion, you only had to ask.”

She frowned. “What the hell are you talking about, Dukat?”

Her incredulity was plain to hear, but the edge in his eyes only grew keener. Whatever the issue, he had clearly made up his mind that _she_ was to blame. A chill passed through her, like the touch of a borhya. Had he bugged the security office? Had he heard her exchange with Odo? Did he –

“Damar is missing,” he bit out.

“Okay.” Kira let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. When next she spoke, though, it was with the tone of derision. “Have you checked Quark’s? Damar has been drinking the other patrons under the table lately.” Her smile might have been carved with a micro-lathe. “Or else the transport logs? Once you’ve exhausted the station’s kanar reserves, there aren’t many brain cells standing in the way of a 4 AM joyride…”

Without taking his eyes off her, Dukat said: “Computer, locate Officer Damar.”

“ _Officer Damar is not on the station_ ,” the synthetic voice answered readily.

“What was his last known location?”

“ _Officer Damar’s last known location was ops_.”

Dukat’s next words were light and airy, in contrast with Dukat himself, who had such gravity at that moment, she half expected the Captain’s baseball to take flight and launch into his face. “Well, what am I to make of this, Major?”

Kira had not the faintest idea, but she could well sense this moment’s magnitude. Something had changed. Something had shifted. An awful pause echoed through the room.

“What a sad end for Damar,” she lilted, not sure what else to say. “And here I thought Chief O’Brien had fixed those replicators.”

Whenever he invited her to his office, Dukat would abandon his chair in record time and saunter around and near her in a tight, centrifugal orbit. That didn’t happen now. He remained seated and still, with his Cardassian discipline in full display.

He couldn’t control the expression of his face, though. There, a whole operatic tragedy played out in the space between blinks. And wasn’t this Dukat in a nutshell? A small, tough nucleus of civic duty, chemically incompatible with the cytoplasm of his personal ambitions, personal desires and personal beliefs.

The contrast had always creeped her out.

 _He did some very bad things during the Occupation_ , Ziyal said in her head again. _It bothers him, you know._

“Major, in polite society –” Dukat had started on about something unrelated now “— conversations are not held from three meters’ distance.” His fingers opened at _distance_ , so that the _meters_ seemed to stretch across his palm. “And you and I are… polite, are we not?”

“Copacetic.”

“Then please do me the smallest of courtesies and come over here.” He swiveled his chair to the side, beckoning her.

“Dukat…”

“I _insist_.”

Kira’s lip curled ever so slightly, but she obliged him. He was her _boss_ , she reminded herself. Her _superior_ – although for a moment, it didn’t feel like that, as she towered over his seated form. It gave her a strange, improbable rush, to look at Dukat from this angle, and it scared her a bit. Was this what he felt like all the time?

Then, without warning, he took her hand, and Kira couldn’t breathe for five seconds flat. There was both tenderness and condescension in the touch. But it didn’t matter to her how _he_ saw it: if in his mind he was handling a wounded soldier or a disobedient pet. _She_ just wanted to throw up.

And the worst was yet to come.

“I know about your little resistance movement,” he said gently, like he was scolding a child – like she was a little ten-year-old Ziyal, who had just tripped and destroyed her mom’s favorite urn. “I thought you’d have more sense than to play your cards so soon, Major… and in such an ostentatious manner. Even I won’t be able to protect you now.”

“Dukat, listen to me,” she hissed, heart galloping. “I had _nothing_ to do with Damar’s disappearance.”

“What did you hope to achieve by removing my adjutant from the picture?” he asked, pretending he hadn’t heard her. “Did you think I’d bend my ear to you instead? I admire you, Major, and I cherish you – you know that – but I don’t _trust_ you.”

He was squeezing her hand so fiercely her knuckles had turned white.

“We’ll have words about this later,” he whispered, “once I have more evidence.”

Her right hand was red and aching when she stormed out.

Her Cardassian colleagues got one look at her and wisely withheld their counsel, tapping away at their consoles. Kira melted into ops and threw herself into her duties as if nothing had happened – ordering Tell to look at the secondary phase modulator, since Nosgak clearly hadn’t done it, and asking Mesge to scan for subspace anomalies or anything that might explain Damar’s disappearance.

_So many Cardassians in one place – and wouldn’t the pit be an ideal location for an infernite bomb?_

Such thoughts were hard to contain, but she managed.

Kira was not a people person. Sometimes she wished she could snap her fingers, like the Q, and transport herself to the Calash Retreat or the Sea of Shining Ice, someplace quiet and forbidding. But somehow, right now, she felt _grateful_ for the company.

She should have known that her nemesis would take revenge, and sooner rather than later. She had been warned. She had been cautioned. She just hadn’t expected – hadn’t really _thought_ – this was _Dukat_ , after all!

Kira slowed down, inhaled, and repeated this sentence in her mind until it metamorphosed into something vicious and barbed.

This was Dukat, after all.

Somewhere between the liquor and the sand spine and the daughter and the dress, she had lost sight of his true face. She had stopped taking him seriously; begun to view him less as a mythical figure and more as a man. A horrible man and a cruel one, to be sure, but made mostly of water, and full of cracks out of which it could leak.

Well, the morning after their little chat, the myth came barreling toward her again, with cackling laughter and filed teeth, and laser beams shooting out of his forehead.

Odo was gone.

Odo was _gone_.

“Computer, locate Constable Odo,” ordered Kira. She stomped out of the security office and tried not to panic.

“ _Constable Odo is not on the station.”_

“Where was he seen last?”

The computer spoke serenely, unable to comprehend the implications of its answer. “ _Constable Odo’s last known location was the station commander’s office._ ”


	3. Nip the Buds, Part One

**Stardate: 51136.3. Station population: 778.**

Kira made her way from the security office to ops, where Orlat informed her the sensors had revealed nothing about Damar’s disappearance. The secondary phase modulator was finally, _finally_ fixed, but there were other outstanding errands, like a blown fusion reactor, an erratic power conduit, and a replicator that only made banana bread. She spent a few angry minutes delegating these to her peers.

As a last order of business, she asked after Dukat. And was told to try the holosuites.

Quark’s bar was filthy with Jem’Hadar, but Kira ignored them, making a beeline for the second level, where most of the holosuites were located. The doors opened with a hydraulic sound. As soon as she stepped past them, Kira realized this was a new program – or at least one that Jadzia had not forced on her yet. Blue assailed her eyes. Motion sickness grabbed her by the waist and shook her, as if she were a coin purse unwilling to impart its loot. The air felt balmy and hot, and she could see Dukat up ahead, barking orders at invisible crewmen.

They were _sailing_.

Any other day, she’d have found it funny: Dukat’s second stint as a swashbuckling pirate, the Klingon Bird-of-Prey giving way to a feathery sloop, with a bowsprit like a corkscrew. But this mental image was joined by other, more painful memories: Odo kayaking with Chief O’Brien, Odo swimming in the Great Link, Odo deliquescing, _Odo_.

A round, dark stone rolled between her ribs. It centered her.

When Dukat heard the approaching footsteps, he told his underling, “Belay that order,” and spun around with a grin. It instantly froze in place, though, when he laid eyes on Kira.

He must have been expecting someone else.

“Major. To what do I owe –”

“ _Stop_.” The wind was getting stronger, buffeting the starboard. Kira’s mouth twitched with the effort of not spitting in his face. “Where’s Odo? What have you done with him?”

Before Dukat could reply, a great wave lifted the ship and dropped it down its jagged spine. Kira pitched forward, and Dukat almost put out his arms to steady her, but seemed to check himself at the last moment.

“Computer, end program,” he growled.

The technology complied, and the pair was walled in again. The floor had reverted from wood to hard granite. Kira’s stomach rolled over one last time and was still. The grid around them seemed to pulse like a living thing, something green and vast and bioluminescent. She felt trapped inside its stomach.

“Are you trying to gaslight me, Major? Accuse me of the same crime you are guilty of?” Dukat did not sound amused. “I’ve interrogated prisoners myself, you know. Your resistance playbook has very little clout here.”

“Odo is gone.” Kira’s voice rose together with her agitation. “He’s disappeared, and the last place he was in was your office, I asked the _computer_ , don’t play dumb with me.”

“What are you babbling on about?” Dukat gestured impatiently. “Computer, locate Constable Odo.”

The computer’s verdict had not changed since one hour ago: “ _Constable Odo is not on the station._ ”

“Is this some kind of joke?”

“Dukat, cut it out. Seriously. I’m not buying the act.”

At that point, a new voice entered the conversation, as the Cardassian’s original guest made her appearance. She was a mix of casual and formal today, wearing both pants and perfume. This spoke volumes about her relationship with Dukat: even when they were planning something fun together, she still didn’t feel entirely at ease with him.

“Father?” squeaked Ziyal. “Nerys is here? What’s going on?”

Kira’s teeth gnashed together: she wasn’t doing this, not now. “Ziyal,” she said, “your father and I are having an important discussion. Could you give us a moment?”

“No, let her stay,” Dukat bit out. “She said it herself, Major: she’s not a child, but a woman grown. She can make up her own mind.”

“Dukat –”

Ziyal was wringing her hands, muttering “I don’t like this,” but they ignored her, too caught up in their argument.

“Constable Odo came to my office yesterday, yes. I had asked him to submit an overview of young Jake Sisko’s subspace communications, as there was a suspicion that he was leaking Dominion secrets to his father.” This should have been a shocking revelation, but Kira couldn’t concentrate on it at all. It was a single beam fired over her head, while she was dodging mortar blasts. “Odo fulfilled this task, and then he left.”

“He left.”

“Yes, Major. He turned into a liquid and, I assume, slid under the door.”

“Liar!” Kira shouted. She had him now. “Odo always keeps track of his regenerative cycle. He wouldn’t come to you if he was about to lose his shape!”

“Well, then I suppose he transformed into an invisible pink sinoraptor. At any rate, he was _gone._ ”

“Father! Nerys!” Ziyal’s voice had risen in pitch: she was practically yelling. “Please stop fighting!” She took a deep breath. “ _Right now!_ ”

The adults paused.

Their common love for the girl had always managed to conquer their differences and bring them together, even against their will. Ziyal was like that Federation myth of the red thread of fate – only she did not just form a line from one person to the other, but thick, gnarled, burdensome shackles, winding round and round. She worked her magic this time, too.

Because they both loved Ziyal, they respected her request and fell silent. Because they both loved Ziyal, they were facing her way, bodies in parallel, and meeting her grim, determined gaze, seconds before she disappeared.

**Stardate: 51137.5. Station population: 695.**

Gul Relmek had been promoted to Dukat’s new errand boy. He was more stoic than Damar: at least he wasn’t throbbing with pure racism. He was also less bothered by menial tasks, as evidenced by the fact that Kira could say “Dukat’s new errand boy” to his face. Which she did, several times. It gave her a modicum of pleasure – and under the circumstances, “a modicum of pleasure” was all she’d get. The boulder was still rolling down the hill.

“Okay,” she said, when she was done listening to his proposal.

“Okay?” Relmek had clearly not expected her to agree so easily. His surprise made her feel dirty inside, and her next words came out sharper than intended.

“As a _temporary_ measure,” she said. “If someone needs to occupy Odo’s seat on the Ruling Council, it might as well be someone with a stake in Bajor’s fate.”

Dukat gave her an inscrutable look when she entered the meeting room later that day, wearing her dress uniform. He actually seemed _grateful_ , the door to his good graces open just a crack.

Weyoun, on the other hand, proved less receptive to the whole idea. Oh, he was fine with having the Bajoran liaison be part of the Council. Her presence legitimized what the Dominion was doing on the station. He just didn’t appreciate Kira and Dukat tag-teaming to convince him of something as absurd as _disappearing_ _people_.

“Trust me, Weyoun, I’d be the first person to accuse Dukat of lying. When I noticed Odo was gone, I immediately suspected foul play on his part. But I saw it with my own eyes.”

“As did I.” Dukat inclined his head to her. “My apologies, Major, for imputing Damar’s disappearance on you.”

She stared at Dukat, although her words were addressed to his ally. “We have to do _something._ ”

“I assume you’ve checked the transporter ID traces,” said Weyoun, sounding bored.

“Yes!”

“Have you considered,” he changed tack, “that little Ziyal is playing a prank to get you two to spend more time together?” He glanced at each of them in turn, simpering. “Children can be ever so inventive.”

“Ziyal wouldn’t do that.”

“Besides, we just established that it’s not _just_ Ziyal.” Kira lifted her eyes, as if to invoke the disembodied voice from the ether. “Computer, how many people are on this station right now?”

“ _There are currently 695 people on the station.”_

Kira smacked her palm on the table. “There were over a thousand people two days ago!”

“People come and go,” dismissed Weyoun.

“Not so quickly! Not when only _three_ ships have left the station, and those were transports with a 20- or 30-person complement.”

“The Major is right. Several supply ships and a frigate have docked since then, as well. The numbers simply don’t add up.”

Weyoun studied them closely, as if they were all playing Roladan Wild Draw and he was searching for their tells. What he saw there did not satisfy him: his jaw squared. Kira wanted to explain how he was mistaken, how she’d _never_ work with Dukat again, even to oust the Dominion, how the mere thought of him painted her vision black and red – but she held her tongue. Dukat was her only corroborating witness for this event. She couldn’t afford to alienate him.

“Thank you for bringing the matter to my attention,” said Weyoun. He had already written them off. “I will make sure to mention it to the Founders. Now, about next week’s shipments of ketracel-white...”

**Stardate: 51138.7. Station population: 555.**

Weyoun did not show up for their next Council meeting. Asked about his whereabouts, the computer made the ruling Kira had anticipated: _“Administrator Weyoun is not on the station.”_ The last, frayed, tenuous string she could still tug to control the situation was gone: Deep Space 9 belonged to the Cardassians now.

And the disappearances kept piling up. Just today, 22 families had reached out to her to ask about their missing cousin. Great-grandmother. Husband. Newborn.

Kira felt useless.

Lonely.

Terrified.

The universe had reached for her ear and after one brief caress had torn it off, leaving her pagh to bleed out among the stars.


	4. Nip the Buds, Part Two

**Stardate: 51140.8. Station population: 311.**

With Weyoun gone, Kira began to see fewer and fewer Jem’Hadar on the Promenade. She didn’t know how much of that was to blame on the random disappearances, and how much was the Cardassians throwing their weight around. It bothered her, not knowing. She also had no idea how often Weyoun had reported back to the Founders, or how many reports he had to miss before they sent someone to investigate. Surely it was only a matter of time.

More than 700 people had disappeared since the day of the Traveling Y’Raka Exhibition. While Kira and Dukat had not been able to bring Weyoun around, his disappearance had been something of a blessing: it gave them the evidence they needed to convince everyone else. Any last holdouts were swayed by Kira and Dukat’s joint speech on the Promenade. Unity in diversity.

People panicked, of course. A flurry of departure requests followed that first, tense announcement. When they were denied, a couple of pilots even resorted to violence, detonating their ships’ mooring clamps to push off the docking ring. Dukat took this as an excuse to crack down hard, increasing the patrols he had already doubled a while back. Kira hated it, but she was powerless to object. After all, they had no idea what this thing was. It could be contagious. They couldn’t risk it spreading to other vessels... or stations... or planets.

“These disappearances are bad for business, Major,” grumbled Quark. He swiped a cloth over the bar, which was spotless, driving his point home.

Kira glared at him over her voodai, from where she was leaning on the bar. “Yeah, right.” The top blue layer of her drink was superimposed on him like a mustache. To her right, Morn was nursing an Andorian ale, slow yet methodical. He’d been there all day: his second stomach probably contained enough liquid to irrigate a desert. She snorted without mirth. “I’m sure you’re happy to be rid of Odo.”

“You would think so,” said Quark, and some shade of privation visited his eyes. “But I have bigger things to worry about, Major. This fiscal quarter has been an unmitigated disaster. My profit margin has dropped by more than 60%, and that’s _before_ subtracting my nonexistent staff’s salaries!”

“Stop complaining, Quark. Other people have lost their _children_ or their _spouses_ , you know? All you’ve lost is customers.” She took a long pull on her drink, feeling herself transition from Scared Witless and Perpetually Breaking Out in Cold Sweats to just plain Numb. “At least Morn is still here.”

Morn swiveled his massive head – about to say something hysterical, no doubt – and, as if on cue, vanished before their very eyes.

“ _No_ _ooo_ _!_ ” Quark’s scream ripped out of him in a long, drawn-out burst, as though he were a magician coughing up handkerchiefs.

“Major.”

Kira’s breath caught when she heard that voice. Still reeling from Morn’s loss, she glanced over her shoulder at Dukat, who looked surprisingly raw, like her, and somehow anxious.

“What is it?” she asked.

He half-leaned half-sat on the chair next to hers. The insouciant jut of his hip drove her mad. “Nairric ran a level one analysis on the sensor readings at the moment Odo disappeared.”

Kira frowned. Was Nairric Chief of Operations now? There seemed to be a new name every day; it was giving her whiplash. “Tell me.”

“He speculates that the disappearances are caused by a subspace disruption, but so far, the data hasn’t backed that up. I’m afraid we’ll have to keep looking.”

Kira rubbed her temples. “Could it be a warp bubble?” She’d heard of something similar happening to the doctor of the Enterprise.

“No,” said Dukat emphatically. “The warp core readings are all within normal parameters.”

“Right.” Not for the first time, she wished Chief O’Brien were there. She couldn’t even contact the Federation for help: that was a diplomatic incident in the making. She _had_ reached out to the Bajoran government, but they’d just dragged their heels, as evasive and disorganized as she’d ever seen them. Not that she was about to tell that to Dukat. He’d smell blood in the water. “A virus, then?”

“We’re looking into it.” Dukat seemed to hesitate slightly before continuing: “I... also spoke to Central Command. Legate Krim, to be precise. He sounded genuinely disconcerted by the news – promised that Cardassia would come to our aid, warp speed ahead. But when I contacted Central Command again a day later, they put me through to Legate _Goris_ , and I had to explain everything all over again.” His face darkened. “A few more iterations of this, and I found myself speaking to a _glinn_.”

Kira’s head shot up. That was the exact same treatment she’d gotten from Shakaar, from Kai Winn! Soothed with empty promises of succor and support, then fobbed off to a lowly aide or ranjen who knew nothing of the situation. It was infuriating. The last few people she’d spoken with had sounded particularly evasive, as if they were hiding something.

She was about to share this information with Dukat – quid pro quo – but something held her back. Instead, she started: “Dukat, if I…” The words stuck in her gullet. “You know, if I, too... _decamp_ , please let the Bajorans leave the station if they want to. They can stay on Derna or another Bajoran moon until we figure out how this thing spreads.” Prophets, why was she asking _him_?

Dukat had ordered a drink of his own by now, and he held it up to the light, watching refraction cut the swizzle stick in half. “You’re not _decamping_ , Major.”

His certainty startled a laugh out of her. “How would you know?”

“Because whatever force is behind this must be aware that I will dig out its entrails and fashion them into a soft-meat hat,” he said, “if it dares to take anything else from me.”

Kira shifted in her seat. A small cylinder of heat formed behind her navel, slotting neatly into a bigger cylinder of shame, only to be swallowed by the biggest container of all: guilt. It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last. This package of emotions had been with her for years, ever since Dukat’s forceful speech to that Xepolite weapons smuggler. Once again, Kira buried them in some well-hidden drawer of her body, full of discarded notes, tapers, katterpod seeds and baby teeth.

Outwardly, she gave a mocking smile.

“You’re staying here,” Dukat said peremptorily, clinking his glass to hers. “Where you are needed.”

He didn’t say by whom, but it was there in the coordinated slosh of their beverages, in the intimate angle of his head.

**Stardate: 51142.4. Station population: 124.**

Ops was converted to a makeshift barracks. Pillows, blankets and mattresses littered the floor. Bodies of all temperatures huddled close. For some reason, the “survivors” had decided they’d be safer if they kept a constant eye on each other. Even when people left to visit the temple or to hang out at the bar, they did it in groups of three.

Needless to say, this did a number on everyone’s nerves. It was bad enough that they were all stuck on the station for who-knew-how-long. To be denied their privacy was unbearable. Kira was pleased that she’d gotten to know so many new people – more than she had in the past six _years –_ but most of her acquaintances didn’t last an hour. Relmek had disappeared. Quark had disappeared. Rom had disappeared. _Hello_ and _goodbye_ were bosom friends.

Dukat, too, had mostly abandoned his office for ops, although he went inside when he needed to make calls. He probably didn’t want the assembly to overhear his allies’ brushoffs... didn’t want to lose any more face. When he wasn’t problem-solving, he was giving rousing speeches about solidarity and perseverance. He was good with words – Kira had to give him that – but they’d only get him so far. She had already heard the Bajorans mumbling of a “reckoning” and “the Prophets’ wrath.” There were too few of them to really _riot_ , but they could cause some damage, if they didn’t disappear first.

At least the replimat wasn’t crowded anymore.

When noon rolled around, Kira spent a long few minutes studying the menu in pleasant contemplation. This was a luxury she could never afford before, what with the replimat’s queues. Pruin, the Cardassian who rounded up their three-people party, ordered a zabu meat stew.

“One red leaf tea, please,” she heard Dukat say from his own replicator.

Kira happened to glance in his direction, which was a nice bit of serendipity, as she became witness to something beautiful. Instead of a red leaf tea, the machine graced Dukat’s tray with a slice of _b_ _anana bread_.

“Very funny, Major,” said Dukat over her chortles. “Does this sabotage give you the infusion of self-worth you so clearly crave?”

“I didn’t – I didn’t –” Kira was laughing so hard that her eyelashes brimmed with little tear beads. “Replicator’s… been broken for over a week now.” She was about to say something else, but she fell apart again at the sight of Dukat with his stern expression and his silly wedge of banana bread. When she was finally able to calm down, she explained: “It _only_ makes banana bread. I tried to fetch an engineer for the repairs when I found out about it, but as you know, we’re a bit short-handed right now.”

“Well,” he sulked. “You could have warned me.”

“I could have.” Kira grinned.

At last, she made up her mind to order some veklava… but her replicator did not respond. Neither did the next one. Nor the next. In fact, Dukat’s banana bread bakery was one of only _two_ machines in the replicator bank that were still functioning.

That quickly wiped the smile off Kira’s face.

It had the opposite effect on Dukat, who proffered his plate to her, eyes alight. “Some bread, Major?”

**Stardate: 51143.8. Station population: 18.**

The trouble with the replicators was not all due to regular wear and tear. As it turned out, the doomsday-happy Bajorans had roughed them up – along with one engineering station, two turbolifts and several shops – in one last act of defiance before they vanished.

There were only three Bajorans left on the station now, including Kira. The others were Neerwa, a jittery young man with a caffeine addiction, and Iddolb, who spent most of his time doodling Orion slave girls with Bajoran prayer sticks. Of the remaining 15 people, eleven were Cardassians, two were Ferengi, one was Andoran and one was Human: Jake.

Surveillance was constant.

Talk was sparse.

Tempers were high.

“It’s your fault, man!” Neerwa shouted, all up in Gul Gecet’s face. “Nothing like this happened while the Federation was here. The Prophets are punishing everyone for the Cardassians’ reign on Deep Space 9.” Apparently, his existential terror was so great it had supplanted his fear of the Cardassians. “If you had one shred of decency you’d throw yourselves out of the airlock!”

“May I remind you, runt, that Terok Nor is and always has been a _Cardassian_ station.”

“Anyone up for a round of tongo?” asked Iddolb, who had just run out of ink.

“Gentlemen, please...”

“Everyone shut up!” Kira lashed out. “This is _not_ the Prophets’ doing, Neerwa. I wish it were comeuppance for Cardassia’s atrocities, but it’s not. If it were, then _he_ ” – she stabbed a finger at Dukat – “would have been the first to disappear.”

 _Y_ _ou_ would have been the first to disappear, said a small voice in her head. You’re just a homing missile of violence and hate, zeroed in on anything with scales. Kai Opaka knew that about you. You once blew a civilian’s waist clean off with your photon grenade. You were not under pursuit and had ample time to shoot her dead, put her out of her misery, but you _didn’t_ : you liked the language of fear inscribed on those Cardassian ridges. You liked the moans. You liked the way the blood pooled.

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Major,” said Dukat, in a very self-satisfied tone.

She and Dukat been going at it a lot lately, and the rest of the group seemed fed up with them, so that the moment they flared up, everyone else simmered down. They even made peace long enough to run down a list of potential culprits, in rapid-fire murmurs. Q? Too apathetic about Benjamin Sisko to bother with the station. The Borg? Too far away – they were said to reside in the Delta Quadrant. Generic aliens, as Bajorans had pictured them in the pre-warp age, brawny and purple-skinned, abducting people for their vile experiments? A children’s tale.

Kira was on the point of suggesting _the ghosts of last week’s frefret_ as suspects. But she found her audience much diminished: Neerwa, Iddolb and Gecet had blinked out.

**Stardate: 51144.4. Station population: 8.**

It would be over soon. Would it feel like a transporter? Would it come with a burning sensation, or more of a tingle? Would it hurt?

Kira probably should have been praying, or meditating. Instead, she spent most of her time with the Cardassians, trying to put what little engineering and medical expertise they had left to use. Dukat did the same. Often, he could be seen consulting a sheet of paper, but he’d put it away as soon as anyone approached him. With one exception. When Kira walked up to him to discuss their latest neurosynaptic scans, Dukat did not budge; he let her see. She realized, then, that he wasn’t hogging some key piece of intelligence. This was one of Ziyal’s paintings. He caught her eye briefly, wordlessly, before turning back to the sheet of paper.

They looked at it together.

**Stardate: 51145.6. Station population: 3.**

Jake was watching something on his PADD when she found him. He was on the upper level of the Promenade, where he always used to sit with Nog, legs dangling off the edge. He cut a small, solitary figure, like a paper boat on a lagoon.

“Hey, you.”

He glanced up at her. “Hey.”

“You shouldn’t wander off on your own.” Kira sank down next to him, resting her elbows on the railing. “I was worried about you.”

Jake shrugged. “Everyone else disappeared, even though they stayed in the same room for days. So what’s the use?”

Kira bit her lip. His cynicism caught her off guard; she hadn’t known he was that far gone. That was on her, though: she hadn’t spoken with him much over the past couple of weeks. She’d felt... ashamed about DS9’s current state, and singularly unfit to provide comfort.

“You may be right. I just want to make sure you’re okay.” Her cheek twitched. “If you got hurt – well. I have this mental image of your father giving me a terrifying scowl and uninviting me from all future jambalaya potlucks.”

That coaxed a smile out of the boy. They just sat there for a while, listening to the flat, forceful voices on the PADD. Jake was watching the Federation News Service.

“Can you believe this?” He made a sweeping motion to the onscreen journalist. His eyebrows stormed out of his face like mountain crags. “They haven’t even mentioned the disappearances. They just said DS9 is on lockdown for an unknown reason, and no new ships are allowed to dock. And that was, like, the _fourth_ story after a series of reports on the Dominion.”

Kira craned her neck to get a better look at the screen. The focus had switched to Admiral Rollman, who was declaiming on the strategic importance of ketracel-white storage facilities. Kira was only half-paying attention: strangely enough, the Dominion War was not at the top of her list of priorities right now. She was mesmerized by the Admiral’s hair – wondering how much time she spent in front of the mirror to achieve that curvilinear look, and whether it was a personal indulgence or a PR decision, something to make her look quaint and interesting – when the hair popped out of existence.

Together with the rest of the admiral.

“Oh man.” Jake clutched at his head. “What the hell is _going on_?”

His question summed up the despair that Kira hadn’t been able to articulate. She had no answer for the boy, but she felt oddly protective of him at that moment. With Sisko absent, Jake was _her_ responsibility, under _her_ custody. She hugged him close, her palms clammy and firm against his back. Promised: “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She felt a yielding weight as Jake sagged gratefully against her shoulder – and then a plunging void as he disappeared.

**Stardate: 51146.0. Station population: 2.**


	5. Alone Together, Part One

Her first instinct was to abandon Deep Space 9 and get the hell away from Dukat. But that might’ve been just what he was after: to have the station all to himself. Her skin crawled at the thought of him gallivanting about, scoping out her home planet and the Celestial Temple without any supervision. So Kira shuffled back to ops, a gnarly ball of pent-up energy.

Dukat was leaning against an engineering station when she arrived. He got a read on her right away. “I take it young Sisko will not return?” Evidently, her glare was answer enough, for he nodded to himself. “Just you and me then, Major.” He didn’t sound as euphoric about it as she would have expected. “When I said I wanted more time alone with you, I didn’t mean it quite so literally.”

Kira groaned, collapsing into the first available chair. “It would be just like you,” she said, “to monkey-paw us into this awful dead end of a situation.”

Dukat looked perplexed. “ _Monkey_?”

She wasn’t in the mood to explain Human idioms to him, especially ones she barely understood herself. “Your wish backfired.”

“Oh, don’t exculpate yourself from responsibility _yet_ , Major.” Dukat pushed off from the engineering station with a boyish grin. “You were the one who said you wouldn’t give me the time of day if I were the last man in the quadrant. You must see the irony in that statement now.”

“I’m _not_ giving you the time of day,” she said mutinously. “I’m going to sleep.” She wasn’t the least bit tired – mostly, she felt empty, from the past week’s trials and from that weird broadcast and from Jake’s loss – but her tolerance for Dukat was at an all-time low.

“In that case, I propose we find ourselves more comfortable sleeping arrangements.” Dukat’s grin did not waver. “You may be used to nodding off on mildewed furs and Iddolb’s autoerotic doodles, but I have standards.”

They settled into Jake and Nog’s old quarters on the Habitat Ring, so that they each had their own bed. The possibility of camping out in a separate room barely even crossed Kira’s mind. She needed to keep an eye on Dukat. And, truth be told, she needed him to keep an eye on her: to reaffirm that she was _here_ , she _existed_.

“I think I’m more of a Nog than a Jake,” said Dukat conversationally. He’d claimed the Ferengi’s bed, the one next to the wall. “What’s your view on this?”

“Sure – you also like your women naked and subservient.”

“Major!” he gasped. “You wound me. I was going to say I appreciated the rigors of military service.”

As it transpired, Dukat did _not_ sleep in his armor. Kira turned away reflexively as he stripped down to his undershirt, and did not face him again until she was sure he’d crept under a blanket. The environmental readings were still calibrated to Cardassian tastes, rendering the room miserably hot. Even so, Kira kept her own clothes on when she lay down, even the jacket. She’d remember to do something about the temperature tomorrow.

She wondered if she should also tell Dukat about Admiral Rollman’s disappearance… about the phenomenon not being limited to Deep Space 9. Maybe not. She liked the idea of holding it over his head, using it as a bargaining chip.

“Are you sure you don’t want to peel off a few of those layers? You’re sweating.”

Kira squirmed a bit on her mattress, annoyed that her discomfort was so obvious. She conceded only to the point of unzipping her jacket.

“If you try anything,” she said hotly, “I will frog-march you to the transporter and beam you directly into a gormagander’s spleen.”

“Oh, not the _spleen_ , Major.” She could practically hear his smile. “That’s the second worst gormagander organ.”

They fell asleep that way, head facing the ceiling, arms at their sides, with their beds one meter apart. Jake and Nog must have pushed them closer to watch something together on a PADD, and neither she nor Dukat took the initiative to separate them.

Kira tossed and turned for hours before giving in to her subconscious. She could tell that she was losing it, and she didn’t even know what _it_ was: her mind or her strength or her faith. Perhaps all of them. Even in the worst years of the Occupation, she’d never felt as alienated from the Prophets as she did now. If people were like katterpods, as the prophecies suggested, then the universe was neither sun nor gardener. It was a late frost, ravaging the red-tipped growth without discrimination.

Kira shuddered with her whole body. She wouldn’t cry, on the off chance that she’d be heard, as much as she wanted to. It was abhorrent, being left behind – and with _Dukat_ of all people.

And yet, it could have been worse, her seditious mind helpfully supplied.

She could have been left behind _without_ Dukat.

The next day was largely spent in ops, running scans and hailing passing ships, none of which deigned to answer. The pair traded scant words until well into the afternoon, when Dukat suddenly mumbled, “Polaron particles.”

“Come again?” Kira looked up from the turbolift she was trying to repair. She was on her knees, burrowing around in the entrails of a panel.

“I’m reading a report on Morn’s disappearance... which we were able to time with a high degree of accuracy, based on the timestamps from Quark’s security cameras.” Dukat’s back was to her, and she saw his shoulders hunch slightly as he pondered. “There was a surge of polaron particles right before he vanished. Any idea what it might mean?”

“Not a clue,” said Kira, wishing once again for Jadzia or Chief O’Brien or, heck, even Mesge. She pulled back from the panel and wiped some sweat off her forehead, thinking. “Could it be a wormhole?”

“Maybe a small one,” Dukat agreed. “I’ll try to run a multispectral sweep. Hopefully _someone_ here had the good sense to keep a manual.”

Kira snorted. “Don’t worry. The Chief was nothing if not meticulous.” As she spoke, she wedged her foot between the turbolift’s sliding doors, then used both hands to pry them apart. “He probably has manuals on taking a shower,” she grunted. “Or pouring a glass of beer. ‘Step one: don’t let Quark do it. Step two: don’t listen to Quark’s advice. Step three: tilt the’ – _ow_!”

Eerily, she saw her hand catch between the turbolift’s doors, all pink and supple and exposed, and she _felt_ it a second later, like a small star exploding in her skull. Each of her fingers swelled to the size of her thumb.

Tears were spilling through the cracks in her composure as Dukat ran to her side, mumbling _spirits_ and _oh no_ and _Major_. “Medbay,” she implored – or maybe he did. Everything was a jumble. Dukat rushed her down a hallway, which seemed both longer and narrower than normal, like the vents she had to crawl through for the Resistance as a child. Once they were in the medbay, he hypo’d her in the neck with an analgesic. He also held her hand and used a dermal regenerator to grow skin over the wound.

“What’s the sitch, doctor?” Her teeth unclenched as the pain receded. “Is my springball career over?”

“No.” Dukat contemplated her swollen hand. “But until tomorrow, I recommend you use your other hand” – he brushed his thumb over her wrist, feather-light – “when the urge takes you to direct a lewd gesture my way.”

Despite herself, Kira laughed, which came out as a scraping, wanton sound. It startled her. She was giving him liberties, she realized. She ought to stop him, she ought to pull away, _she_ – except Dukat beat her to it, dropping her hand like a bad habit.

That hurt.

A few hours later, they were back in Jake and Nog’s room, lying in their respective beds, when Dukat put voice to the doubt that was saturating the air. “Perhaps it’s time we took our leave of this place.”

The chronometer they had set up blinked noiselessly. It counted up a neon-blue minute. “No,” said Kira. “We don’t want to risk spreading this elsewhere.” A lie: she knew for a fact that it had already spread, or was never local to begin with. “Besides,” there was a grain of hope in her timbre, “someone might still come for us.”

Dukat hummed under his breath. “I’m surprised your Federation hasn’t already paid us a visit.”

She had been thinking the same thing. At this point, the Defiant could probably swoop in and take the station all on its own. Sisko and the rest knew enough about the latest events to infer that the Cardassians were sitting ducks here. She almost told Dukat as much, before remembering that his knowledge of the animal kingdom was quite limited. But there had been no sign of the Federation, or any other political power.

“Bajor has been awfully quiet, too,” Dukat mused, reading her mind. “Does First Minister Shakaar not care whether his old flame is MIA?”

Kira said nothing at first. She had intended to play it cool and keep all her cards close to her chest. But once again, Dukat proceeded to vomit information on her: things that no one had asked him to reveal, things that could easily be used against him.

“I can tell you there’s no help incoming from Central Command,” he said. “They’ve stopped answering my calls altogether.”

Why, why, _why_ did he keep opening up to her? She knew for a fact he didn’t trust her. He’d told her so himself!

Anger bloomed in the cavity of her chest, torrid and irrational. Kira almost reached boiling point... and then the pot was taken off the stove.

Dukat had rolled over to face her. He looked smaller in the dark, younger, more vulnerable somehow. She had a sudden vision of him as a child, playing at war instead of waging it: phasers replaced by water guns, executive orders replaced by a single, scolding finger. As a teenager, roughhousing with his siblings. As a young man, witnessing his father’s public execution.

Her thoughts went hurtling down a cliff, toward a black sea of question marks. Where was he going with all this? What was his angle?

“I haven’t heard back from Bajor, either,” she was forced to admit. “I don’t think –”

She paused.

“Yes?” She couldn’t make out his eyes, so she conjured them up in her imagination, too, blue and bright and earnest. Too earnest. Like he had nothing to hide, even when he had _everything_ to hide.

“I don’t think our governments abandoned us,” Kira said softly. Their gazes interlocked, as she braced herself to tell him about the Federation News Service, Admiral Rollman, everything. “I think they’re disappearing, too.”


	6. Alone Together, Part Two

As if summoned, the Federation came knocking a few days later.

By then, the last fully functional replicator had broken down. Dukat and Kira had been prudent enough to stock up on food before that came to pass, but that still left them in the unenviable position of having to choose between field rations and banana bread. _T_ _hat_ particular replicator seemed impervious to decay.

“So, what’ll it be?”

“I’m not sure. Do I feel more attached to my molars or my arteries this morning? Say, Major, isn’t the Sacred Week of Sydadan coming up soon? Given our dearth of options, we could begin fasting for it already.”

“Dukat, kindly keep your paws off my religion.”

“I’m just trying to be open-minded…”

“Well, _don’t_.”

It was in the midst of this riveting exchange that the computer alerted them to a new development in ops. The USS Defiant was requesting permission to dock.

Dukat quirked an eyebrow, looking at her with naked astonishment. Kira’s elation must have been equally undisguised.

The second that Airlock 14 opened, she hightailed it to the starship, as if she were late to her nephew’s balaklavion recital. She didn’t know what to expect. Back when the Dominion had conquered DS9, most of her friends had piled into the Defiant: Sisko, Julian, Nog and the Chief. Garak had been aboard, too, plus a full complement of officers. That had been months ago, so a lot may have changed, but a starship that size could accommodate a lot of personnel. She was bound to come across a familiar face or two. Her footsteps ceased to _tromp_ and began to _clang_ as she entered the vessel.

Inside, there was only Garak.

“Ah… Major Kira.” His tone was sunny and amiable, a proper blast from the past, but there was a weird lassitude to his smile. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. Then again,” he contorted in his chair, stretching his limbs and neck, “at this point, I’d even be happy to see Dukat.”

Dukat chose this moment to materialize behind her. “Is he the only one left?”

“I stand corrected.”

“Garak, what happened? Where is everyone?” Kira was following a script. She already knew the answers to her questions.

“They began to disappear when we came in close proximity to the station. Julian was the last to go. I was holding him when he –” Garak seemed to remember Dukat’s presence: he shook himself and finally got up. “What do you think is causing all this?”

Dukat and Kira glanced at each other. “We’ll fill you in.”

They didn’t get that far. Garak was gone before lights out. Dukat had invited them both to the replimat for a late-night beverage, clearly intending to prank the ex-spy with the banana bread replicator, when he vanished. Straight back. Furrowed brow. Finger poised over the menu.

The space within Kira that craved company and friendship emptied again, gaping a bit wider than before, cavernous, abyssal.

Without missing a beat, she pointed at the replicator. “I’ll take a crack at that puppy.” A spot of grunt work should take her mind off things. “Maybe I can tweak it so it makes wine instead of banana bread – Prophets know I could use some.”

In the end, she merely altered the sugar-to-flour ratio of the banana bread. Sleep that night was slow to come, and difficult to enjoy. Dukat casually dangled his arm in the space between their beds, but if that was meant to be an invitation, it was one Kira turned down.

“Nerys, were you close to Lieutenant Commander Worf?”

He’d taken to calling her _Nerys_ again. Bastard. They had finally given in and paid a visit to the holosuites, although they were careful not to linger in the virtual world for too long. Loneliness and uncertainty were driving them half dotty as it was – they shouldn’t go out of their way to court the other half. They had been lolling in a booth of Vic’s Las Vegas Lounge when Dukat posed that question. The band had just started _Home on the Range_ , painting a mellow and forlorn picture.

“Not especially,” answered Kira. “But I’m close to Jadzia, so I’ve spent a lot of time with him.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

“Oh, I just find it fascinating,” said Dukat, like a knife passing through silk, “how the Klingons were at odds with the Humans for over a hundred years, and now they are among the Federation’s most steadfast allies. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

“Not especially,” she repeated with more vim.

“And this despite the fact that some of the Klingons’ practices directly contravene the Federation’s moral code. After all, the Klingons hardly have an equal relationship with their client states. Why, even the quch’Ha –”

“Dukat,” she sighed. Was it too much to hope for that the dwindling audience would make him _talk less_? “Bajor is not part of the Federation –”

“Yet.”

“And as long as that’s the _case_ , I’m not buying into your half-assed parallels. Bajor and Cardassia aren’t gonna be allies anytime soon, especially now that you’ve bartered Cardassia off to the Dominion.” She inhaled sharply. “And I won’t squeeze my beliefs into your Empire’s pokey little mold.”

“You seem to think Cardassians are some monolithic entity, Nerys,” said Dukat, leaning in eagerly. He was enjoying this. “In fact, my _mold_ is not so different from yours. During the Occupation –”

“Yes, by all means, Dukat, let’s talk about the Occupation!” The soft, tinkling piano in the background made an odd counterpoint to their debate. Kira forced her voice down. “Every life spared,” she hissed, “every smallest improvement was due to your charity and kindness, and every monstrous act was to blame on your superiors, am I right? _Prophets_ , you’ll never change. If it weren’t for Maritza...”

“Maritza,” Dukat tried the name on his tongue like a tart, imported meat. “I heard that little ball of yarn. Do you believe Aamin Maritza is made of a better stock than I, Nerys? Why? Because he had no power?” He draped his arm across the booth, so that Kira almost had to recline against it. She couldn’t wrap her mind around him, yet her breath mingled easily with his. “Was his sniveling inaction better for Bajorans than my actions, even the more forceful ones? You could have had Gul Toran, you know. You could have had Gul Darhe’el. You should thank your lucky _stars_ that I was Prefect.”

Kira had so many objections to that statement, but there was no getting through to this man. How did she fall so low, anyway, that ‘getting through to this man’ had become her preferred pastime? Despair climbed up her throat and choked her, before moving higher, higher, up and out, spilling from her lips in a voice like black tar: “Why are you still here?”

Dukat tilted his head. “I thought we were having a conversation.”

“No, I mean – why are _you_ still _here_?” She tousled her hair in a sudden pique, but that was not enough, did not get her point across, and so she shoved both palms against his chest. The armor did not give. “Why _you_?”

Dukat studied her. His eyelids crinkled at the sides, the way they did when he was feeling fond. All things considered, he probably didn’t mean for his answer to come out so waterlogged and so ominous: “Who else?”

Who else.

Prophets.

If Kira were to boil her life down to its basic elements – if she were to spread out the tapestry of her pagh and cut out the primary motif, the loudest, most recurring pattern – she feared that _this_ , here, now, would be the thing. Her and Dukat, arguing about the Occupation. Her and Dukat, smashing things left and right and toting up the damage, notepad in hand, breathing in lungfuls of detritus and dust. Who else? She felt like screaming.

“Computer, end program.”

At night, he dangled his hand off the bed again in unspoken invitation. This time, she took it. The multispectral sweep had been inconclusive; the tetryon scan had totally failed to initiate. As their fingers intertwined, the hole inside her filled with defeat and self-loathing and a third thing, too terrible to contemplate.

There was a pause.

“What are you thinking about?” Dukat asked quietly.

Another, longer pause.

“Tomorrow,” Kira whispered, “let’s get the hell out of here.”

He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.


	7. The Athens Address

The palukoo skittered ahead of them when Vassan Monastery became visible in the distance, as if sensing they were coming to a pit stop. Its furry, articulated body blazed orange-red in the oppressive sun, like a hunk of ladarium. Kira had never cared much for palukoo – their looks _or_ their bitter, chewy meat – but this one was growing on her. She’d never had a pet before: did this count as a pet? They hadn’t given it a name yet.

“Ah, life in the Bajoran countryside,” said Dukat. “One has to admire the trickle of the waterfalls… the hoarse cry of the batos… the redoubtable smell of their manure.”

Kira grinned despite herself. “I told you we should have gone to the Eastern Province.”

“I doubt that would be far enough,” said Dukat, wrinkling his nose. “I am convinced that this smell carries.”

It had been over a month since they’d vacated Deep Space 9. The trip to Bajor had been short but not without incident: right after their runabout took off, they had been ambushed by a brace of Maquis ships. Kira didn’t know how they’d gotten their hands on cloaking technology, didn’t know what they’d wanted, either. Perhaps to interrogate them about the status of DS9, given all the rumors about it... or to take them in as hostages. It was a moot point, because both ships had fallen still as soon as they got near Kira and Dukat’s runabout.

Empty.

After that, Kira had piloted the vessel to the first available landing site on Bajor. She was starved for sympathy, starved for fellowship. But as far as their surveillance efforts could establish, the planet, too, was deserted. They’d touched down near Hathor, and since then had traveled to all of Bajor’s major cities. They’d found plenty of stocked food, as well as new sources of entertainment – Kira had even taught Dukat some springball basics – but no people. Not at the Bajoran Foreign Affairs Building. Not at the Rakantha Institute of Science. Not at the Monastery of the Kai. They were alone.

Kira was putting one foot in front of the other, wishing she could tractor in the monastery, when Dukat enquired, “The speech is scheduled for 2100 hours, is it not?”

She grunted her affirmation. “They should have a monitor at Vassan, an H140 model at least. We can watch it from there instead of our PADDs.”

“Sounds cozy.”

The President of the United Federation of Planets, Jaresh-Inyo, would be addressing the galaxy-wide streak of disappearances tonight. Kira was looking forward to the speech. They still followed the news as best they could, and a couple of dumb procedurals, although both journalists and actors seemed to disappear minutes after they hit _play_.

“But I hope you won’t be curling up with Klingon soap operas and a bowl of kava nuts every night from here on out, Nerys,” Dukat joked. “We should both be in peak physical condition” – and he leered, rather halfheartedly – “for when it falls upon us to repopulate the world.”

Kira rolled her eyes; he always made these jokes. Over the last couple of months, she was sad to report she’d grown closer to Dukat – she had no choice in the matter – and no longer recoiled at his advances, verbal or physical. She let him cook for her. She let him tease her. She let him hold her hand. In fact, Kira was appalled at their easy chemistry: the way they bantered, their political debates, the tension stretching like a frazzled rope between their bodies. But these things only cast a darker pall on her memories of the Occupation. If Dukat could be generous, and sweet, and charming, and scrupulous, and brave – if he could be all of these things, why had he chosen to be wicked?

The apple of the sun had oxidized by the time they reached the monastery, yellow giving way to amber. The buildings were not pretty by any stretch: the kindest epithet she’d give them would be ‘functional.’ But if they threw off the place’s spiritual balance, it was recouped many times over by the verdant garden that sprawled across the complex.

It didn’t take Kira and Dukat long to find a monitor – a brand-new H200 model – and to install themselves on cushions in front of it. The palukoo followed them there, skittering for a few minutes to familiarize itself with its environs before curling up in a far corner. The room opened to a tidy little porch looking out on the northern side of the garden, which was dominated by a hasva tree, its roots straining out of the ground like restless spirits. Clusters of sivajo blossoms were in bloom, purple in the shade but lighter, practically white, when exposed to direct sunlight. A gentle artificial stream burbled cheerfully across the view.

Tomorrow, Kira mused, she might go out there to meditate. She hadn’t done it in so long...

“Ten more minutes.”

The screen still showed the Federation logo: laurels and a blue canopy of stars. The chronometer at the bottom right confirmed her guess.

“I love this planet,” Dukat blurted out suddenly. Kira glanced at him from the wing of her eye. He was gazing out at the garden: the ersatz bridge made of discarded flower pots and the colorful, fat lunki fish cavorting in the stream. “I thought about retiring here in my autumn years – maybe somewhere in the Kendra Province. The sunset over the Glyrshar mountains always stole my breath. But Meru died, and Naprem died, and I lost my post. And now Ziyal...”

Kira bit her tongue. He’d already told her about her mother and the supposed relationship they’d had. She’d been incredulous for days, then livid, _furious_ , before settling into a state of quiet indignation. His story did not lack for verisimilitude, but the timeline did not work out. Most of Kira’s childhood memories were of the Singha refugee camp: if he’d supported her family on Meru’s behalf, it couldn’t have been longer than a year or two. As a result, she’d taken his claims with a grain of salt. If only for the sake of her own sanity.

“Well, you’ve got your wish,” she snarled, with a sweep of the arm that enwrapped the room, the garden and the field outside. “Granted, it’s the Hendrikspool Province, not Kendra, but it’ll do for your domestic fantasy, won’t it?” She ought to stop: none of this was Dukat’s fault. And yet, she couldn’t abide the thought that he might take the smallest grain of pleasure in it. “You can strut around Bajor as if you own it, just like old times. You can take the palukoo out for walks. You can have my undivided attention, all day, every day. You can wheedle me into your bed. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“Nerys –” Dukat reached out for her, but she scuttled away. At the same time, a susurrus of claps came from the monitor. The clearing of a throat. Music.

President Jaresh-Inyo’s speech had started.

And oh, it was one for the ages. White classical columns served as a backdrop for the recording, while farther below sprawled a hilly, glimmering city. Athens, the cradle of Human civilization. The implication was clear: times may be rough, but the Federation would be reborn sooner or later. For once, Dukat put his commentary on hold and just listened. The gravity of the situation meant that the loftiest wordsmanship was not out of place. The Grazerite got visibly emotional at some point: his great jowls wobbled like ocean breakers.

“One day by needs we must all disappear, but not like this. Our mother thread of life shall not be cut off, but shall be tied to that of other beings to nourish them. Our fiber will keep the whole rigging hale and strong, on this great cosmic ship we’re all aboard. I… use these metaphors to evoke the Greek culture that started everything here on Earth. Don’t worry if you can’t figure them out – my aides had to explain ‘rigging’ to me, as well. On my home planet of Grazer, we would rather say: ‘When grass is in short supply, feed on the hair of my grave.’ These disappearances are an abomination unto nature, and rest assured our scientists will get to the bottom of them soon.”

One camera was zoomed in on Jaresh-Inyo’s wise, wizened face and another on the assembled crowd, ‘Earth’s ultimate rearguard.’ They seemed enthralled by the speech, but not necessarily in the way he might have hoped. People were growing skittish. There were shrieks, wails.

“– and draw strength from your brothers and sisters.” He lifted a hand. “So I beseech you, do not let anguish overwhelm you. There is still light at the end of the tunnel. We’d never have taken to the stars if we weren’t ambitious, optimistic folk. And do not write off those you’ve lost, for we are far from certain that –”

And then everyone disappeared.

Everyone.

A steady hum emanated from the monitor… a gurgle from the running water… chirps from the tiku in the undergrowth. In time, the feed gave up the ghost, choking out an error message. Kira felt like a disaster victim under smoking rubble, clinging to life inexorably, with no paramedics in sight. Her body had broken into tremors. By contrast, and much to her annoyance, Dukat seemed composed by her side. The absence of Jaresh-Inyo and the rest only accentuated his unwelcome, welcome presence.

Just then, Kira had a terrible realization – which seemed so obvious, so _logical_ in hindsight, she didn’t know how she could have missed it.

“Don’t give up on me now, Nerys,” Dukat was saying. Once again, he pretended to know how she felt, but he didn’t, he didn’t know _anything_ , he hadn’t even figured out the basics. “I’m still analyzing the logs we downloaded before we left. And if need be, we can go back to Deep Space 9 in a few weeks, retry the tetryon scan, or –”

Kira shook her head vehemently. When she looked up at him, her eyes were running, and so was everything else, her nose and her emotions and her pagh _._ As if she weren’t Kira Nerys but really a Changeling in her stolen image, melting off, crumbling apart.

“It’s us,” she breathed. “ _We’re_ causing this.”


	8. Tales from the Occupation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, this is late. Also, NSFW.

“That’s awfully solipsistic, Nerys.”

Dukat paced about the room, lighting candles in his wake. The grace and sanctity of the scene appealed to Kira: the sputtering flames, the blue light of the monitor, the soft cushions, the encroaching twilight. But the Prophets weren’t here with her. They had gone, vanished, _poof_ , like everyone else, leaving a gaping hole inside her, a shed tooth that twinged and hurt and invited endless prodding. All the prodding in the world wouldn’t bring them back: it only made the spot more tender.

“Although, given the present circumstances” – Dukat grinned at her – “it _i_ _s_ tempting to think the world revolves around us.”

Kira wasn’t in the correct headspace for his humor. All of a sudden, the monastery garden looked very inviting: if she could be out there, amidst the tall grass and the circuitry of branches, she might be able to decompress. But as soon as she thought about storming off, she was reminded why she couldn’t. What if Dukat were gone when she returned? She doubled over with hands on her knees, hyperventilating.

“Come now. You need to settle down.”

“I _can’t_ settle down,” she panted. “I’m telling you, people aren’t disappearing at random. They disappear when we observe them. When we get near them, or… or watch them on our PADDs.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t possibly know that. I’m certain others are disappearing, too – people outside of our visual range.”

“ _No_. The admiral on Jake’s broadcast vanished as soon as _I_ started watching. And Garak said the _Defiant_ crew only started disappearing when they got close to the station. Close to _us_.”

“Nerys, as you are my only conversation partner, I must enjoin you not to – as the gentle detective from our shows put it – ‘lose your entire goddamn head.’”

Kira ignored him. “Prophets, you’re really the only one left. I didn’t want to accept it, didn’t want to consider it, but now...” Her vision blurred. “Dukat, this is a nightmare. How – how can we go on living? And _t_ _ogether_?”

Her companion scoffed. He seemed to roll up his proverbial sleeves for this, the fiddliest of topics. “I’m sure we’ll get along swimmingly, Nerys, if you just stop blaming me for everything.”

Kira’s breathing slowed again, down to a healthy tempo. She felt oddly relieved that their discourse had come back around to the Occupation. The higher moral ground was hers, forever hers, and it felt secure beneath her feet.

“I blame you the exact amount you need to be blamed.” Her opening salvo went whistling through the air. Boom. “I blame you for being Prefect of Bajor.”

Dukat groaned as if to say, _oh_ , _that old chestnut_. “And how many of my decrees as Prefect,” he enunciated, “do you think I had a say in?”

“How about all of them? _All of them_!” Kira threw her hands up. “You _chose_ to sit behind that desk every day, and reap the benefits of your position, and move your pawns around the board – a few thousand starving and overworked here, a couple of million dead there, who’s counting? Not Gul Dukat! When the arithmetic is so high, it takes a bigger man than you to realize the sum total is murder.”

“You _chose_ to detonate your bombs,” Dukat retaliated.

A pang. An abrasion. He’d drawn first blood. But Kira rallied herself: “I didn’t do it out of malice. There was a war going on.”

“I never felt malice toward you, either.”

“Oh, please! You _hated_ us!”

Frightened by the noise, the palukoo hoisted itself on its spindly legs and scampered out the room. Kira barely registered it leave.

“You are projecting, Nerys: _you_ are the one fueled by mistrust, disdain and hatred. I _loved_ you. I still –”

“Stop. Just stop.”

“Has it perhaps slipped your mind that I have a Bajoran _daughter_?”

Kira’s fists clenched, index fingers straggling over thumbs. It still hurt him to talk about Ziyal, and she respected that, so she danced away from the more obvious comebacks. _You wanted to kill her_ _on_ _Dozaria_ _._ And: _You almost_ _bl_ _e_ _w up the station with her on it._ “Ziyal is a person,” she said, “not some twisted boarding pass to my acceptance.”

“And what _is_ a boarding pass to your acceptance, Nerys? Because that seems to be an exclusive cruise ship filled with your compatriots, where you all pat yourselves on the back and write off the atrocities that _you_ committed.”

“I didn’t write them off,” she gritted out. “I think about them every day. And it’s not an exclusive cruise ship. It –”

“Oh? Tell me then. What does it take, Nerys?” He stepped forward, crowding her. “We’re stuck together now, so we should do our best to... ameliorate the experience for each other. What is it that you _want_?”

She’d fantasized about this moment numberless times, but in her mind’s eye it played out rather differently. Dukat should be the one on the defensive, prostrated before her, repentant and in tears. Well. They’d get there if she had anything to say about it. Kira whipped out her PADD and connected it to the monitor, never taking her eyes off the Cardassian’s.

And she called up her government’s files on the last Prefect of Bajor.

“Fine,” Dukat said tightly. “If this is your game, I’ll play.” He took out his own PADD, typed in a few commands and overrode her connection, displaying his own documents on the monitor: security files on Bajoran terrorists.

He opened his palm. “Ladies first.”

Kira glowered at him but complied. “‘A minor operative whose activities are limited to running errands for the terrorist leaders,’” she read aloud. “‘Her tasks largely include breaking up supply lines and scrambling –”

“You can skip to the highlights.”

The letters on the monitor loomed over her threateningly. They were several magnitudes more haunting than Jaresh-Inyo’s speech. “‘2362: assault on Gul Pirak’s house,’” she read. “‘Kira Nerys detonated a plasma charge that killed twelve Cardassians and crippled twenty three. Among the dead were Gul Pirak’s family, including his four young children. The injured parties mainly comprised his retainers, including his cleaning staff, cooks, governesses and gardener.’”

Dukat laughed grimly. “Was the _gardener_ part of your war, too? That hedge must have been clipped into a very lifelike Borg Queen.” She opened her mouth to object, but he didn’t let her. “Keep reading.”

“‘2363: Kira Nerys set off cabrodine bombs at each of Dahkur Province’s weapons depots. This time, the victims included 138 Bajorans. As for the Cardassians, they –’”

Dukat interrupted her again. “Why don’t we look at 2367?” His fingers moved nimbly, swiping through the document until he reached the year in question.

Oh. Oh, _no_.

“Are we still doing this, Nerys?”

Kira sent him a withering look, but did not back down. “‘2367: Kira Nerys took part in a series of raids on the Haru outposts. The terrorists positioned themselves at the exits of the facilities, of which they clearly possessed a blueprint. They piggybacked on an incoming transmission from Deep Space 9 and used a holofilter to make themselves look like Cardassians. They then signaled an emergency, urging the troops to abandon the outposts. Wielding stolen plasma weapons, they proceeded to burn alive the entire garrison, their servants and any visiting families. A total of 732 Cardassians and 66 Bajorans were killed this way. The terrorists were in a position to shoot down the fleeing parties after the first few minutes – since their progress was slowed by the pile of corpses in each hallway – but they still opted to set them aflame.’” Her eyes stung, and the next few sentences kind of blurred together. “‘Nineteen Cardassians were captured and tortured for information, out of whom three returned. For several months, they wouldn’t utter anything but garbled phrases and vomited compulsively...’”

Kira read on for another half minute, but she couldn’t make it to the end of the report. A wave of agony rocked her insides. Her loathing for Dukat came back in force, and she was sure the alphabet of her face had rearranged itself into a _GO TO HELL_ _._

But it didn’t give him a rise. On the contrary, he seemed rather pleased with himself. “I forgive you, Nerys,” he said benevolently.

Kira’s jaw dropped: the _nerve_ of him. “I don’t want your forgiveness.” Her head spun. She pressed her back flat against the wall, steadying herself. “Let’s have a look at _your_ record.”

“Gladly,” he bit out, snatching the device from her and plugging it back into the monitor. “‘Gul Dukat, Prefect of Bajor circa 2346-2369,’” he read aloud. “Let’s see… I’m sorry, Nerys, for shutting down the Bajoran Archaeological Institute.” Kira scrutinized his tone for sarcasm, but couldn’t readily detect any. His finger swiped the item away, moving on to the next offense. “I’m sorry about the 97 works of art stolen from the Bajoran State Museum. I’m sorry for mandating that Cardassian be spoken and taught in primary schools.”

Dukat looked up from the PADD to the monitor, where twenty-odd years of his life were exposed, laid bare, the carcasses picked clean. On their return trip, his eyes briefly landed on hers, and his expression was almost _accusing_ , before he picked up where he left off.

“I’m sorry about the destruction of the Jalanda Forum and the Kiessa Monastery. I’m sorry about the 18,327 suspected members of the Resistance I had executed.” He peered at the screen. “Isn’t that number somewhat overblown?” He swiped it away, regardless. He was barely following the list anymore, skimming over most of the items, reciting from memory. “I’m sorry about the 2.4 million deaths in labor camps. I’m sorry about the 1.1 million deaths due to starvation. I’m sorry about the medical tests on children in Belanda. I’m sorry about the cloning experiments in Kran-Tobol. I’m sorry about the 457,000 people raped, maimed or killed in Gallitep... and everything else that happened there. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Dukat’s voice was raw with emotion, and though his eyes weren’t giving up their moisture, they weren’t completely dry, either. “I believe this is your cue.”

Kira bristled. “That’s not –”

“What?”

She made an abortive gesture with her hands. “You don’t _mean_ it.”

“I’ve been telling you I have regrets about the Occupation for years, Nerys, and now you decide –”

“And even if you _do_ mean it, it’s too late now.” A breeze wafted in and caressed Kira’s hair, oblivious to the tension in the room, and when she licked her lips, there was a devastating tang of salt. “It’s easy to apologize for a war you’ve already lost.”

“As easy as it is to moralize about it after you’ve won,” Dukat rebuffed. He placed a hand on the wall behind her – he was standing so close now. The Cardassian ridges made a quilt out of his face, composed of different fabrics: arrogance and chivalry and valor and contempt. “Where’s my boarding pass, Nerys? Say ‘I forgive you.’”

“You’re always making excuses for yourself! You don’t _deserve_ forgiveness.”

“Central Command left me a broken, thirty-year-old system and gave me orders I did not agree with – that’s the truth, Nerys, so _listen_ – but I _did_ follow them to the letter every time.” He bent his head toward her, until it obscured the garden and the monitor and the cushions, until Dukat consumed the entire world, like he’d been trying to do for decades. “So, here it is. The cart has been upended, and all the choice, exotic fruit is tumbling straight into your lap. You were right to blame me. Now _s_ _ay_ it.”

Kira’s accusations had nowhere to go. The asteroids glanced off the deflector array. The arrows scattered underfoot. Dukat had been her symbol for the Occupation for so long, she didn’t know how to react when he took responsibility – real _or_ pretend. She glared down at the monastery floor, where a mandala was embossed: it had an intricate pattern, small helical wedges within trapezoids, and a serpentine line running through everything.

She’d been eight years old when she first heard Dukat’s pleasant, husky voice on the Singha camp’s subspace radio and known it for what it was. And that was the day she’d felt hatred for the first time – real, throat-narrowing, spit-shooting _hatred_. Whatever happened to that girl? Even as Dukat admitted his wrongdoings, she couldn’t shake the sense of defeat, of something irrevocably lost.

She was stuck with Dukat, and she had always been stuck with Dukat.

“I can’t,” she muttered. “I can’t.”

Dukat opened his mouth to speak, but she didn’t give him a chance, as she grabbed him by his stupid collar and pulled him downwards, kissing him full on the lips.

Everything from there on felt inevitable: Dukat cupping both of her cheeks, boxing her in; Kira sliding her tongue against his, loud, damp, obscene. He pushed her more firmly against the wall, rutting against her thigh to dispel any illusions about where this was going.

Dukat hardly needed any preparation, but she did, and he tended to her with gusto. He toyed with her left nipple almost to a disconcerting extent, until it was dark pink in color, hard and sore; then he shifted his attention lower, laving her with long, soft licks. The sight of his black hair between her legs drew a harsh shudder from her. It had happened. It was happening. Kira’s thighs splayed open for him, and she felt teeth.

“Up,” she commanded. “Up. Roll over.”

When she finally eased herself onto him, she had to clamp her mouth shut, if only to scrape the pain out of her moans. He was big and oddly shaped, and she was out of practice. But Dukat let her go her own pace, one reverent hand on her hip, the other on her stomach. Small, rhythmic movements set off minute explosions of delight. Just when it started to feel nice, Dukat went out of his way to spoil it.

“How’s this, Nerys? Is it – _ahh_ – everything you’d hoped for? Don’t lie to me. You’ve thought about this before. I _know_ you have. I’ve thought about it, too... _Ye_ _s_. That’s it. That’s it. You want it now...”

Kira squirmed on Dukat’s lap, as if to extricate herself, but it was just for show. If anything, her body expressed _approval_ , her mouth gaping wide open, her walls fluttering around his girth.

“Good girl.”

“Shut up,” she gasped. “Just – zip it.”

His ridges made themselves known every time she moved, a wholly new and delightful friction. She came twice this way – which might have been humiliating, except Dukat hadn’t contributed to these orgasms beyond talking, a _lot_ , and occasionally plucking at a nipple. Dimly, Kira considered stopping after the second time: she could always finish him off with her hand, or have him do it. But Dukat was already clutching at her wildly, pulling her head in until their noses touched, making her watch as he took his pleasure. Kira felt him throb inside her for several long seconds, noted the familiar rush of heat, and saw it in his face, too, where his eyes were locked with hers. His eidetic memory was probably in overdrive right now, recording her face, her posture. The thought made her shiver with apprehension.

Afterwards, it felt more natural to stay together than to pull apart. Even when Dukat propped himself up, Kira didn’t flinch away, but remained sitting on his lap. Her feelings were hard to pin down. An approximation: The thrill of making a hard shot during target practice. The disappointment when a colleague made a harder one.

“We’ll see them again,” Dukat promised. She hadn’t realized her muscles had tensed up until he started rubbing her back.

“Even so...” A sharp, trilling noise came from outside: another insect had joined the tiku. “I have to live in a world that did this to them.” She shuffled in his lap. “And –”

And to us, she thought mutely. A world that shunted Cardassians into toxic power structures, and forged Bajorans into shivs to slice those structures open. A world that drenched their hands with blood before they were old enough to rinse. Kira felt light-headed with guilt. For a moment, she imagined forgiving Dukat – _truly_ forgiving him – welding Bajor and Cardassia into a nicer, jollier, child-friendly tale. The civilian without a waist stopped crawling toward her on elbows and chin. Prin let her touch his black, disfigured face and murmured _i_ _t’s all right_. The collateral damage reclaimed their names and faces and returned to their families for dinner.

Kira felt a prickling sensation. It was all so bittersweet. A winsome dream. A greeting card from an alternate past, where postage was free and sentiment a dime a dozen. She squeezed her eyes shut and burrowed her face against his neck.

“Your boarding pass,” Kira said.

“Nerys?”

“You can have it.”

Her heart felt somewhat lighter, as Dukat cupped the back of her head. Forgiveness, she thought. Peace. Absolution. To lowlives like themselves – dictators and terrorists – they were nothing but a stupid fantasy. But Kira was committed to that fantasy now, since the real world had collapsed around her ears. She might as well repaint it, dress it up in frills and lace, ignore the fine print in the warranty.

“Ziyal’s been gone for a while,” Dukat said. Though he had changed the subject, he was clearly touched, his diction faltering. “And we haven’t done the,” Kira felt him swallow, “separation ritual yet. Would you care to join me for it someday? I would be... grateful if you’d instruct me on the appropriate Bajoran rites.”

Kira sighed. “Yeah. We can say the Prayer of the Splintered Hearth. It’s supposed to be a mourning chant” – she lifted her face to his – “for parents.”

The moment was shattered by a burst of applause, as gray-swathed figures began to pop up out of thin air.


	9. History Is Written by...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter up early to compensate for the dry spell.

The applause carried on undisturbed for a good few seconds before Dukat barked, “What is the _meaning_ of this?”

He was already climbing into his clothes. Kira followed suit in a daze. This newest development had drained her brain of thoughts more thoroughly than even her best meditation. There were five aliens in the room with them now. They looked like Humans, although their clothing was unlike anything she’d seen Jake or Benjamin Sisko wear: quaint and stark and angular.

One of them hugged her.

“My darlings,” she cried, “they didn’t believe me! They said that you wouldn’t make it, that we should stop while we were ahead. That was very early on, when you two held hands on the station. But I knew you had it in you! Because _you_ , you were so warm-hearted in spite of everything you’ve been through, and he – well – he _knew_ he was in the wrong, and wouldn’t admit it out of egotism. Oh, this is the crowning achievement of my career! I’m just so, so happy for you!”

Another alien, a male one, stepped forward. “Give them some space, Leves.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. Sorry.” Leves pulled away, fanning her cheeks with both hands. One of the nocturnal birds that proliferated in this area began to sing the state of its love life. A gust of air swept by, putting out several candles.

The man regarded them with sympathy. “You must have a lot of questions.”

Kira could only gape at the aliens. Dukat had come to stand beside her, and he was doing this chest-puffing, neck-craning thing that made him look far taller than he really was. A single, sluggish thought germinated in the abiogenetic soup of her mind: “How did you get here?”

“Translocator,” a different female said. “It transports matter over distances of up to eighty thousand light years.”

Dukat pulled a face. “The Federation does not possess such technology – we would have _known_.”

He spoke as if the Obsidian Order were an all-seeing, all-powerful entity: Kira had to roll her eyes. A few meters away, Leves sprang back into action, her face fully reanimated. Even after her storied history on DS9, Kira was not the best at reading alien expressions, but she had no trouble tracking the passage from confusion to understanding in her eyes. “Oh! You think –” She made a rowing motion with her arms, which must have meant something in their native body language. “We’re not the Federation. That is to say... we’re not Humans.”

This translocator device was pulling its weight. More aliens had shown up in the meantime, wearing the same austere tunics and dumb hats.

“We understand how you might get that impression, though,” continued the male alien. “When we first encountered them on the starship _Voyager_ , we were astonished by their resemblance to us. But in fact, if you look past the surface traits, there are many physiological differences between Humans and Nyrians...”

“Nyrians,” pronounced Dukat. “Never heard of you before.”

“We’re from the Delta Quadrant.”

“Are you now. And what brings you to our _latest_ humble abode?” His swagger was not a bit dented by the fact that these people had recently seen him naked. “One has to assume you were behind the disappearances.”

“Uh. Well. It was Leves, principally.”

Leves dropped some kind of alien curtsy. Sparks were shooting from Dukat’s eyes, and Kira’s own face was probably performing similar pyrotechnics. The Nyrians gave their peer another round of applause, slapping the palm of one hand with the back of the other, like Bajorans.

“Oh, I can’t take all the credit! Our university’s art-historical program on _Catharsis in_ _Major_ _Historical Conflicts_ has been running for millennia already. And the mechanisms I used are well established: isolation of the subjects, neutralization of news sources, withholding of all feedback…”

Every word was in the right place, every clause was clean and complete and grammatically correct, yet Kira couldn’t parse any of Leves’s statements. They made as much sense to her as the lowing of the batos outside the monastery, or the drone of the wind.

“Mechanisms,” she repeated.

“Yes, dear.”

The female who’d explained the translocator explained this, too, her voice as serene as her message wasn’t. “You see, we are quite adept at peaceful colonization: we just gradually replace the population of a planet with our own people, by beaming them out and beaming Nyrians in. Although the objective of the _CaMaHiCo_ program is not colonization, the execution is much the same.”

 _B_ _eaming them out_. That might mean everyone was still alive. Before Kira could formulate her doubts, Dukat asked, “And what _is_ the objective of this program?”

“Catharsis, like Leves mentioned!” The male Nyrian was smiling at them beatifically, as though they were his best and brightest students. “We select two individuals representing opposite sides of a historical conflict, and we cut off their access to the rest of the world. Given the distance between our quadrants, our translocators can only beam out one person at a time, but that is usually enough to isolate the pair within a few days or weeks. After all, we only need to dispose of the parties that they interact with.”

Dukat was quivering with rage beside her. Out of reflex, Kira placed a hand on his arm.

“Don’t be alarmed,” the Nyrian entreated. “When I say we _disposed_ of them, I mean – well, we just temporarily moved them to a special biosphere, equipped with all the amenities they might need. In fact, the group who showed up for Jaresh-Inyo’s speech is still on Earth – we just moved them to another country, since we couldn’t transfer so many of them to the Delta Quadrant at once. I believe they’re in Madagascar now. Anyway, now that Leves’s experiment is over, we will start beaming everyone back.”

“How,” said Kira, hyperaware of her body and the way her mouth coiled around every vowel, “is her experiment over?”

The Nyrian looked as if he did not understand the question. “Well, you are reconciled, aren’t you?”

“Of course they are!” Leves beamed. “Oh, you were amazing! So much faster than our other pairs, and so much more…”

“Thorough,” said the previous female. In defiance of cultural barriers, Kira could instantly identify her expression as _lecherous_.

“Why, some of them never made up.” Leves shook her head. “Naakkoth and Vaus, for instance… or Nero and Queen Boudicca. Such stubbornness. Such pride. They warned me it would be the same with you, when I proposed the Occupation of Bajor as my research topic.”

Leves made to hug Kira again, but seemed to think better of it. Her hands fluttered in place as though handling a potter’s wheel. She had a naive, sort of waifish air about her, down to her green Rumpelstitskin hat. Her smile, though – her smile was all teeth.

“But we proved them all wrong,” she purred, “didn’t we?”

The cataclysm after the earthquake.

“We will return everyone to the Alpha Quadrant within the next one, two weeks, starting with the inhabitants of the space station. Thank you _so_ much for being part of this, my darlings. I have that grant in the bag now! This is a redemptive masterpiece – children will study it in school for years, no, no, for _generations_. You did so well. You were perfect. Perfect!”

When the Nyrians beamed out, they seemed to take the air in the room with them, leaving behind a rushing, frozen vacuum. Dukat swore under his breath, then over his breath, outlining _why_ and _how_ and _when_ he would inflict unspeakable pain on them. Kira said nothing for a while. There was a point past anger that she reached sometimes, when she would plaster on a sardonic smile, thin and pointed as a tine – her fellow resistance fighters had witnessed this often, as had Dukat once or twice – and right now she was past _that_ , too. She felt the space around her warp and crackle.

They’d taken her for a ride, and she had suspected _nothing_ , had honestly thought, for a moment, that absolution could be this easy. The giving of it. The getting of it. She’d thought that she could let bygones be bygones.

Laughable.

Bile rose to her throat, her mouth, spreading like an inkblot on her tongue. Dukat was still banging on about his homicidal plans, and it was starting to grate. Kira strode toward him, grabbed his sleeves and wound his arms around her roughly. She wanted comfort, yes, but she also wanted... complication. As if she could get a do-over, skew their last embrace to violence.

The Cardassian frowned, bemused. Then he pulled her in tighter – nails painful against her back, chin sharp against her head – tipping into his old role with ease.

It probably came naturally to him.


	10. Epilogue

“It’s not always like this,” said Ziyal with a mollifying smile.

And by all appearances, that was all it took: Dukat _was_ mollified and smiling. “I’m sure sodomizing your enemies with a rusty halberd is strictly optional.”

Months spent in a Nyrian biosphere had not tempered Prylar Kern’s attitude toward infidels. The bloodiest, cruelest, most graphic passages from the Prophecies were lovingly reproduced during his sermon, while the religion’s basic tenets, like self-effacement and remorse, only got a passing mention. The massed Bajorans still listened carefully, arranged in a half-circle around the pedestal, as the statues of past kais presided over them. The lamps mounted on the walls bathed the temple in a weighty purple light. Some of the faithful had brought handheld lamps, too, smudging their nooks with softer colors: yellow and cerulean and rose.

When Gul Dukat had barged into the temple during services, the Bajorans inside had cowered in fear. The lucky ones in the back had managed to abscond without being noticed, but the rest couldn’t bring themselves to budge. The Cardassian hadn’t said a word to anyone, however. He’d just marched straight up to Kira and his daughter, who scooted over so he could kneel between them. After a pregnant pause, the sermon had resumed.

He didn’t swap any words with Kira at first: only touches. She was wearing a traditional gown, with bell sleeves that fell past her fingers – a fact he quickly turned to his advantage by reaching down, then up, and lacing their hands together. The privacy the clothing netted them felt criminal. Unearned.

They hadn’t spoken much about their adventures since the missing people had been zapped back. The minefield outside the station paled in comparison to the minefield currently taking shape in galactic politics. The Dominion and the Federation accused each other of orchestrating the disappearances, and they were out for _blood_. Kira just hoped Bajor could avoid getting caught in the crossfire. Weyoun was aware he’d lost face by ignoring her and Dukat’s warnings, and was compensating by running roughshod over each and every proposal they made. Even Odo’s reinstatement in the Council couldn’t keep him in check.

Still, Kira was grateful to have her friend back: when they’d been reunited, she’d hugged him so hard he had suggested shapeshifting into a silken pillow. She hadn’t found the guts to tell him the truth yet, though – and as far as she knew, Dukat hadn’t told Ziyal, either. They had a tacit agreement to pretend they’d been abducted along with everyone else. It was more credible than the truth.

Parallel to these developments, and after a few generous drafts of kanar, Dukat had confided to her that he was through fraternizing with the Dominion. He was already planning an assault on a cloning facility on Rondac III, together with Damar, Gul Rusot and a handful of other patriots. He had insinuated he’d need her help getting the Federation on board, too. Kira had very nearly kissed him then.

It was worrisome, she thought, how often that impulse struck her nowadays.

“Are you getting anything out of this?” she asked under her breath, about an hour into the sermon. “You don’t need to come here just for me and Ziyal.”

His tone was playful. “Nerys, have you known me to do things if I’m _not_ getting anything out of them?”

A smile got the better of her face, and clung on for the remainder of the services.

“In the sight of the Prophets,” the prylar said in closing, and the Bajorans repeated it after him in a sweet chorus. Kira loved this bit: the sense of belonging, of being part of something greater. Although her faith had been tested many times over by the Nyrians’ experiment, it was gradually starting to recover, and she wanted to set a good example for Ziyal. Or… whomever.

“In the sight of the Prophets,” Kira repeated with a few seconds’ delay.

Her smile faltered when the prylar snuck an anti-Cardassian broadside into his parting statement. Still, it felt good – it felt _great_ – being around people again. Tomorrow’s services sounded auspicious, too: Ranjen Telna was supposed to give a two-hour sermon on forgiveness, and he was a very moving speaker. She hoped Ziyal and her father would take some time off their schedules to join her.

She hoped for a lot of things.

Within the folds of her sleeve, Dukat stroked her hand, idly, with his thumb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, folks. Thanks for sticking with me this far!

**Author's Note:**

> Questions, remarks, constructive criticism – dish it all out in the comment section! I'd love to hear from you! Also, I'm [enisywrites](https://enisywrites.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr if you want to drop me a prompt, or if you just want to say hi.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Inspired by "You Must Praise the Disappearing World" by Enisy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25917484) by [karrenia_rune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune)
  * [the gentle light that strays and vanishes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25980610) by [ideare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ideare/pseuds/ideare)




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